


something bigger (than the two of us)

by asexualizing (Specialcookies)



Category: Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: (do you hate me already?), Angst, F/F, Heartbreak, Pre-Canon, Unrequited Love, not a happy ending but also doesn't end where canon is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 05:30:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18359579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Specialcookies/pseuds/asexualizing
Summary: There's a sharp pain that comes with loving someone that never really goes away.Lou is in love with Debbie; Debbie doesn't know. Debbie is in love with Tammy; it won't necessarily work out. A triangle of sorts, though not your typical one.





	something bigger (than the two of us)

**Author's Note:**

> i've had this in my head for a while now, finally got it out of my system. 
> 
> listen to Harry Style's version of [Girl Crush](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rroc2y9if_Q) while reading if you want, i used it to set the mood.
> 
> thank you as usual to [Netterz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netterz/pseuds/Netterz) for always helping me with my writing, and to [ emkat97](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emkat97/pseuds/emkat97) for like...everything ever

She's never told her.

There's always been a part of her, small and consistent, that pushed her towards it—tell her, tell her, tell her, come on, tell her—but there's always been a reason not to. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong this or that, wrong.

Debbie would plant a kiss to her cheek like it's nothing and Lou would think—tell her, tell her, tell her, come on, tell her—but she never did do that. Never did have the guts to have Debbie know. Never did believe that if she'd tell her it would end any differently than one of them leaving.

Wrong time, always in the middle of something bigger than the two of them; wrong place, never alone; wrong hour of the night and too drunk; wrong—

The first time Tammy spent the night in Debbie's room, Lou spent the night staring at her ceiling in the dark, leveling her breath as she accepted the fact that this is what Debbie wants.

It's not like she didn't know before—no one knows Debbie like she does, and as their time working with Tammy turned from once to every-once-in-a-while to their usual routine, as Debbie's fingers and eyes lingered, as she leaned closer and brightened and told Lou, "I don't want her to leave," sighing drunkenly and stealing Lou's cigarette from her mouth, flinging her legs over Lou's lap—Lou knew.

"You know you got her wrapped around your finger," Lou told her, and Debbie smiled, mischievous, and said, "That's where I like her."

Their walls were thin, still are, but she's never told Debbie.

"Didn't get much sleep?" Debbie asked her that morning, arrogant and smitten and so very Debbie, her feet dangling off the kitchen counter, her hand running over Tammy's shoulder down to wrap around her chest.

Lou still thinks about that.

"Deb," Tammy chided, but while Lou groaned like she needed tons of coffee and treated Debbie with a glare, Tammy had a smile across her lips and her fingers intertwined with Debbie's.

"What?" Debbie kicked the back of Lou's thigh playfully as Lou stood next to them, facing the coffee machine, but Lou was quick enough to grab her ankle. "It's revenge for what's-her-name."

Lou barely remembered.

"I'd be insulted if I were you," she told Tammy, raising a sharp eyebrow and mastering pretense.

"I don't really mind being used for sex," Tammy replied, and Lou glanced from the corner of her eye to see them kissing, Debbie smiling into it.

She let Debbie's leg fall and stayed with them to drink her coffee.

She's never told Debbie, but somewhere between Lou entering the kitchen and Tammy leaving it, Tammy had learned.

*

There's a sharp pain that comes with loving someone that, Lou's found, never really goes away; not with Debbie, not with anyone before her.

Lou's never done jealousy—wasting her time wanting Debbie is bad enough as it is, she doesn't need the anger and the faint feeling of incompetence to go along with it. And Tammy's _nice_ , nothing like her and Debbie with their sharp edges and cutting tongues; she doesn't want to take it out on her, doesn't want to take it out on Debbie, either.

They've always had this back and forth of fighting and biting and handling each other like only two people of the same kind could, and it isn't any different with Debbie's hand around Tammy's waist—they're still them. They're still just Debbie and Lou. Sometimes, they're Debbie Lou and Tammy—some college kids that are making way too much money off their shenanigans. But mostly, as it has always been, they are Debbie and Lou.

She plays indifferent and that has always worked on Debbie, but Tammy's nothing like them, and Lou's not fooling anyone with half as much a heart as Tammy's. There isn't pity and she doesn't say she's sorry—doesn't say anything, in fact—just sometimes hesitates, and then gives in, because it's Deborah Ocean who is holding her, and Lou can't blame anyone for giving into that.

*

"How do you do that?" Tammy asked her once, more curious than impressed. It was the middle of the night after a successful job, which meant Debbie was snoring lightly in her bedroom by now after a string of orgasms, and Lou wasn't sure that Tammy knew the shirt she was wearing wasn't Debbie's—wasn't sure what this shirt was doing in Debbie's room, anyway.

The floor was cool where she sat on it, cheap bourbon in one hand, a cigarette in the other, leaning on the wall near their record player with one leg folded up. She was too drunk to pick up on where Tammy was trying to go. "How do I do what?"

"If I couldn't have her, I don't think I could do that."

She watched as Tammy sat down on the arm of their couch, sipping water and never taking her eyes off Lou. She wasn't _that_ drunk.

"Do _what_?" she insisted, wanted to hear Tammy say it before she admitted defeat.

Tammy shrugged. "Stick around."

It didn't take much more than that to push her over the edge. Crashing the butt of her cigarette on the floor, she got up, drowned her drink and laid it pointedly on the table next to Tammy. "Well, you do have her."

She doesn't regret this conversation, exactly—just knows it would have gone differently if the stabbing in her chest and the bourbon in her blood were any lighter. But Tammy wasn't fazed, just pushed harder, said, "If you want my advice…"

"I don't."

"You should get away for a bit."

She should have walked right there, back to her room and under her blanket to sleep it all off. Instead, she sighed. "You'd be surprised what you can't do without, Tim-Tam."

She _does_ regret that one particular admission. But Tammy isn't Debbie, and Lou couldn't just lie and fight and bite.

*

Debbie winks at her, lingers at the door, invites her in so playfully that Lou might have thought to just go for it, believe it, take it—if she weren't so acutely aware of how in love with Debbie she actually is. Does Tammy want her to? She doubts it. Does Debbie, really? It doesn't matter.

Lou can't bring herself to even move, not towards Debbie and not away. Pretends to not hear Tammy saying, "Deb, come on," with a slight smile of her lips, a slight twinkle in her eyes.

Pretends to not see the way Debbie's posture changes. The way she softens and turns and appears to be, for all the world to see, in love with Tammy.

*

"She'd marry you in a heartbeat," she tells Debbie over the intercom as Debbie waits to make her move, watching over their mark carefully.

"I know," Debbie replies, running a hand through her hair. She's letting it get longer, now, lets it flow down her shoulders; likes when Tammy runs her fingers through it.

"Oh, you _know_?"

"Yes."

"And what are you planning to do about that?"

"I don't know, Lou."

"She wants kids."

"I know."

"She wants a life."

"I _know_."

"So what are you planning to do about that?"

"Shut up and let me work, will you?"

*

She brings a Jamie home, and an Alison, and a Rebecca, and, and, and, and the ache doesn't subside, the hollow isn't filled. She does it because she can, because it's easy, because it was supposed to help, a little, and the fact the it doesn't makes her worry more than anything else.

She was so used to being alone that wanting something else, at the beginning, felt unnatural. Now, as the feeling has sunk in deeper than her heart, Lou cannot remember what it felt like to be herself.

*

The cons are bigger, now; Debbie's chasing something of her family's name she still has not put her hands on, Tammy follows her because she cannot help it, and Lou—Lou's not entirely sure what she's doing anymore. But she is still there. She is still there, with Debbie. It is still Debbie and Lou, partners in crime, and Tammy… Tammy is something entirely else. Something more.

They do real-estate scams, and robberies that they used to only dream about being able to execute; miles ahead of robbing trucks on highways. They do sophisticated: elegant dresses that hug Debbie's form and make Lou's mouth water, perfumes that Tammy applies to her neck. And Debbie blooms as if the sun is hers to hold, is brighter and faster and more captivating than she ever was. Has them both wrapped around her finger because that what she does best, and no Jamie or Alison or Rebecca could ever replicate that.

Lou's chest is tight and heavy, and it hurts, and yet—

"Couldn't do it without you," Debbie murmurs close to her ear as their bodies are flush against each other, hiding from sight until they'll be in the clear.

Lou's throat threatens to close, but she fights against it, manages a nonchalant, "So I've been always told."

Debbie huffs out a laugh, brings a hand to Lou's neck and presses a kiss to her cheek like she used to do so many times, so many lightyears ago. "Thank you."

"What for?"

"Having my back."

"It makes good money."

"Shut up for once, will you?"

"Guys, let's go," Tammy announces from behind the door, and Lou had almost forgotten it wasn't just the two of them, Debbie and Lou, dancing around words that Lou never will say.

*

She hears the hushed arguments. None of them yet saying what Lou knows they will, eventually, have to handle, but both dissatisfied with where they are—with where they are going.

"How high are you going to reach out to, Deb?" Tammy asks, sounds more exhausted than even Lou is.

"This is who I am," Debbie replies, teeth bared and walls up. Lou knows the schtick. "You knew that. Always."

"Yes, and I also knew that there is nothing, _nothing_ you could find there that would make you stop."

"Then what did you expect? Soccer practice and PTA to lure me in?"

"I…I don't know. I expected, maybe…maybe you'd love me and it would be enough."

"I do love you."

"But it isn't enough, is it?"

"Is it enough for you?"

Lou drinks, locks herself in her room, stares at the ceiling and pushes all emotions out of her way because she is scared to find something ugly in there.

She is scared of the hope that intrudes, that tells her that maybe if Tammy leaves, after a while, she will have the window to tell Debbie, and then, maybe—

*

"Are you jealous?" Tammy asked her once, drunk enough to want to know. "I mean, of course you are, but are you jealous-jealous?"

"You're being a bit too blunt for my taste."

"Please tell me?"

Lou sighed, lit up another cigarette and took a sort of sick satisfaction in the way Tammy scrunched her nose in disapproval. "I don't want to be."

"But you are."

"She's…happy, with you."

She isn't even sure if Tammy knew the way her face lit up hearing that, right before the upward quirk of her lips turned sad.

"But it doesn't always help, does it?"

"Why are you asking me?"

"I'm not entirely sure."

*

Lou finds her own place. A studio with just enough space for her to navigate it. She hangs her polaroids up on the wall behind her bed, stacks her vinyls in neat rows inside a credenza she built herself, thinks that maybe if it'll be _her_ place, instead of Debbie's and hers…

Thinks maybe she should give them their own space to grow into. Thinks maybe she should stop conning altogether. Drinks and feels alone and misses Debbie, misses Debbie so much it is incapacitating; knows she's made the right decision and yet refuses to accept it; wants her even worse than she did before.

Debbie visits—complains about Danny and plans her cons out loud because she is right, and she couldn't do it without Lou. Drinks from Lou's alcohol, sighs when Lou asks about Tammy and says that everything's fine. Says that everything's will be fine. Says that everything should be fine.

"Thinking of Europe, this time," she says when Lou asks about what she envisions next.

"That's…"

"Too much?"

Lou laughs. "Yeah. Might be."

"For you?"

"For _you_."

Debbie swirls wine in her mouth, swallows, shuts her eyes. "I miss you at home."

"Just because you have to handle the fact Tammy wants something else than you can give her, now?"

"I think we're breaking up."

"Have you—"

"We talk all the time. Never say anything. But there's a guy. She told me…maybe it's better if she, I don't know, finds her place there. Suburbs and shit, you know? I'll never end up there."

Debbie tries to sound casual, but Lou can see, can hear, can feel—she is holding something back, something deep and mournful and painful. Wants to reach out and comfort her as the friends they once were, before Lou fell, before it's gotten too much to bear.

Her heart breaks twofold.

"Maybe it'll be better that way," she says, and Debbie drinks some more, nods.

"That's what I told her."

*

And so it goes:

The ugly hope in Lou will raise its head, the part of her that always tries to push her forwards will come back—tell her, tell her, tell her. Debbie will be sad, for a while, but not as long as she deserves to be, because she is an Ocean, and Oceans never stop.

Lou will not tell her. Lou will not tell her because it isn't the right time, at all. Or the right place. Lou will not tell her as they sit in Rome looking over the remains of ancient civilizations; will not tell her as Debbie searches and searches for something that will settle her mind and reaches out and finds Claude Becker and leaves and Lou cannot bring herself to ask her to stay.

Tammy will get married, have kids. She will have no idea how happy Tammy actually is, but at least she'll have what she always wanted. Debbie will smile at the pictures of the baby. Lou will not tell her.

They will stop talking, the three of them. Drift away by purpose more than by the tide. Tammy not taking calls, anymore; Lou not calling; Debbie with Claude. Lou will not tell her.

Debbie will go to prison. Lou will get the call from Danny, asking her to take care of Debbie's things, because he doesn't know who the fuck else to trust. Lou will not tell her.

_You know, I've always—I've always—I've always—_

**Author's Note:**

> i am also on [tumblr](https://straperine.tumblr.com/) if you want me


End file.
